A slow and unreliable front-office system with limited functionality was causing operational problems at Henry Recruitment. The implementation of Voyager’s Commercial front office in May 2007 has had a dramatic and positive impact on the business. Henry Recruitment’s central hub is now operational again and the business is forging forwards.

The Detail

Any HR Recruitment company will tell you that its front-office system is its lifeblood. So when that system is proving to be slow and unreliable, it’s inevitable that business will suffer. Henry Recruitment, a leading technical recruitment company specialising in providing professional staff to the construction, building and civil engineering industries, was facing this predicament.

“What we had in effect was a very expensive Rolodex system” said Kathryn Marks, Operations Director, “the system had severe reliability problems, it was slow, complicated and the support that we were getting was limited.” This inevitably led to a mistrust of the system and a lack of cohesion in the team – “our business was definitely suffering; some candidates were being double called whilst others were not being called at all. We needed a replacement system that we could all trust, that was reliable, easy to use and was well supported. Thankfully, Voyager Commercial has more than fitted this bill.”

Voyager Commercial has made a dramatic impact on Henry Recruitment’s business. “Everybody is using and updating the system and, importantly, enjoying it. Unlike our previous system, Commercial enables us to record our activities in detail and share this information across the sales floor. Each of us now has full visibility of what’s happening with both our colleagues and in our other divisions. This means that when candidates phone in, anybody can talk to them confident in the knowledge that the information on the system is up to date. We’re therefore working a lot smarter and providing our candidates with a much better service - that’s important to us.”

The Voyager system has also proved to be much faster and easier to use. “We used to have problems when we took on a new consultant, particularly with passing on information and accessing previous communications and history, that’s no longer the case. Although Commercial provides you with a vast amount of information, it’s very intuitive and all the information is on one screen and that’s great.” Much of the functionality has also proved to be a great hit, “The Autoskilling and search facilities have proved to be highly useful in our line of business. It finds candidate CVs fast, and these are CVs that may have taken days to pull out and find using our old system.”

From an operational point of view, Kathryn has been really impressed: “Commercial’s reporting capabilities have really improved our visibility of what’s going on. As far as work activity is concerned, we now know who’s using the system, how many calls they’re making and to whom. It’s therefore highlighting weaknesses that we may otherwise have taken weeks to find out existed; it’s becoming an invaluable tool for review and training purposes.”

“It’s obvious to us that Voyager Commercial was written by recruitment people rather than computer people” – Kathryn Marks, Operations Director, Henry Recruitment.

“Although we had outgrown our previous system, with over ten years of data, the prospect of transferring everything to a new system definitely frightened us. The data conversion could not have gone better however, it took just one day and everything was copied over without a glitch."

The training was also deemed a great success. “Yes, the training was brilliant – very thorough, helpful and adapted to our needs. Even our most demanding consultants appreciated the time and effort that they were given and we all found the additional day’s training one month after go-live to be particularly useful.” Kathryn added.

Naturally there have been one or two minor issues since the system went live but these were expected and Kathryn has been very impressed with Voyager’s support capabilities. “We’ve really only had a few minor issues, however I’ve been very impressed by the Voyager’s support team’s knowledge and experience. The Helpdesk always comes back to me promptly, they’re eager to help and they never make me feel like I’m being a nuisance! Their dial-in capabilities are brilliant.”

“All in all, we’re delighted with our choice of product. We’d previously gone through years of pain with our main hub not working as efficiently as we would have liked and we were beginning to find it difficult to keep up with the fast moving pace of our market. I’m pleased to say that Voyager Commercial has provided us with another level of functionality and service. It’s been a huge improvement and we’re now looking forward to the future and our continued growth.”

How we made a difference at Henry Recruitment

Henry Recruitment’s old system was rarely upgraded during the five years it was in use and it was obvious that the system had been written by people who didn’t really understand the recruitment business. For instance: searches were vague, it was difficult to attach CVs, and complicated to record activities and communications. It was also slow, hugely unreliable and poorly supported.

Voyager Commercial has made a real difference because it has enabled Henry Recruitment to work quicker and more efficiently; attributes needed in today’s fast and competitive market. They now have all the functionality that they need, the system is fast and easy to use and it’s also reliable. They also know that when things go wrong, we’re only a phone call away. They now have something that they didn’t have before – peace of mind…